I’ve been self publishing for over a year now it never seems to get any easier. I can’t even remember how I discovered it. I had been writing on here and trying to break into freelance writing, but fiction was my true passion. I wanted to figure out how to make money from that. In all of my reading and research, I stumbled across self publishing.
Writing is the easy part.
Who know, the easiest thing about self publishing was writing the book. I had a cover made fairly inexpensively and put that book out there on Amazon. Someone told me that most books don’t sell more than 100 copies, so that was my goal. I sold that easily, but wasn’t making money that was worth writing home about.
I published my second novella and a favorite author of mine shared my book on her blog. I was over the moon. During this time, I was interacting more on Facebook. I discovered things such as cover reveals and release blitzes. Then there were blog tours; it was crazy. I did a book tour for the second book but planned on it all for my third.
It paid off. I watched my sales climb and my rankings were amazing. My profits on a .99 book weren’t that great, but I was starting to see the potential in self publishing.
Then the self publishing bubble burst.
Everyone and their brother was writing a book and releasing it. The market was becoming saturated and my subsequent releases having done as well as my third. It’s been disheartening.
I’m deep in this world now and it’s full of jealousy and back stabbing. There’s a lot of good too, but for someone that never had much drama in her life, it’s hard to get used to. You watch books with bad covers or horrible editing make it onto all the top lists, wondering what you’re doing wrong.
I never had a real self-esteem issue until I started self publishing. You put your heart and soul into a book only to put it out there for the world to criticize. You have to have thick skin quick or you won’t make it. I’m constantly doubting myself and my writing and struggle with the question of “Am I good enough?”
Today is one of those really bad days. At this point in my career, I’d hoped to be closer to writing full time. Instead, I’m further away from it than I ever was. I look back to that third book and wonder if I’ve already peaked. Maybe I was a one-hit wonder.
In the end, it’s all worth it.
All it takes is one good review or message from a reader, raving about your book, and it’s all worth it. While most of us write for ourselves, let’s be honest; if we didn’t want to have some success at it, we wouldn’t publish.